


Elephant in the Room

by veterization



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 05:03:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean thinks Sam's asleep. Clearly, so does Castiel. Dean and Castiel get a little frisky in the nighttime and Sam's, unfortunately, awake to hear it all. Awkwardness ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elephant in the Room

For such an authoritative man with a voice that causes elephants to shrivel up in corners when he deepens it a few octaves, Sam Winchester is having difficulty finding the words to create an adequate admonishment.  
  
Perhaps if he was a father, familiar with the situation of chastising his son when he's pressed up against the shillings of a windowpane at the backside of the house, itchy bushes pressing into his knees as he sticks his tongue down his newly-acquired girlfriend’s throat, he would be able to approach this crisis at a more skilled level.  
  
But really, he’s nowhere close to a father, he’s what he always has been, a brother.  
  
Sam’s eyebrow twitches.  
  
Stuck in the darkness of the night, a crisp air of wordless tranquility wafting around the motel room, Sam stretches his spine against the lumpy mattress. The springs groan and the radiator hums in the corner. A car passes by the streets outside, littered with puddles of murky rain trickling into sewers, the headlights fanning through the flimsy taupe curtains hanging lifelessly on their rods.  
  
Dean thinks he’s asleep.  
  
Clearly, so does Castiel.  
  
His angel sense and his brother’s lifelong knowledge of Sam’s sleeping habits have apparently dulled and blurred into nothing but stunted instinct and nesciences. Ever since puberty shaped Sam into who he is today, broad shoulders and gangly legs, he lies tucked in his sheets for approximately thirty minutes before his body hibernates and finds peace. He stares at the ceiling, counting bumps and stains, flexing his night vision for hours. Even after a strenuous hunt where his eyelids droop from exhaustion and the lassitude of a six-hour-long hunt wear down his muscles, Sam is unable to be pulled into slumber when he first curls up in his bed for the night. He blames it on his guilt-ridden conscience, side effect of being a hunter.  
  
Dean used to humor him when they were younger, playing word games in the middle of the night in a whisper to not wake up their father and offer them some amusement, the entertainment they never found in the daylight, that Dean always lost due to his poor vocabulary. Dean would drop asleep halfway through a word occasionally, and Sam wouldn’t drift off until about an hour after him.  
  
In all candor, Sam likes the silence. There are the few peaceful moments in his life, ordinarily stuffed full of chaos and interminable kerfuffle. The darkness helps too, so even if Sam opens his eyes, all he sees is black.  
  
And now, the sheets pooled around his chest and an over-sized nightshirt hanging on his torso, Sam is about to drift off.  
  
Only to be instantly interrupted by Castiel’s soft voice.  
  
Sam had proposed the idea of two separate motel rooms. Now that it wasn’t only Dean and Sam but Dean and Castiel and Sam, it had made more sense to give the angel his own space instead of the one unlucky outcast of the three finding comfort on lumpy polyester upholstery on the couch or squeezing into a single bed with a companion.  
  
Sam isn’t senseless. It’s clear that Sam has always possessed more brain than his brother, one of the reasons why they make such a resilient pair once tackling the same project, and Dean isn’t as discreet as he likes to think he is. Sam would’ve assumed that at least Castiel would have enough logic to keep things inconspicuous, but the angel doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of secrecy any better than Dean does at executing it.  
  
Sam had already been shifty at the concept of Castiel having to share a two-foot-wide mattress with one of the brothers, but Dean seemed surprisingly willing when the question came up. In such close propinquity, Sam had been sure that an angel with sturdy morals would have refused the suggestion and rather created a crudely made makeshift bed on the floor for the nights to come.  
  
But Castiel, too, had been astonishingly willing. Sam had watched the whole interaction with his eyebrows furrowed critically as Castiel sidled into a bed fit for half a person with Dean, but neither man seemed to be aware of Sam’s suspicion.  
  
It was, Sam thinks, ineluctable to have it happen. Dean and Castiel are close, close enough to seek salvation in one another, and if hormones and lust are their form of salvation, Sam isn’t one to judge. He feigns a lack of knowledge about the whole liaison, a tremendously difficult task to tackle as Dean and Castiel become brazen enough to make suggestive comments to one another that most innocuous strangers without a knowledge for their relationship would pass by as innocent jokes, but Sam has a knowledge, a detailed knowledge he wishes he doesn’t have, that fills in all the empty blanks.  
  
After the relationship developed, Sam had pressed a bit more insistently that the trio should split up into two different rooms. But Dean had obstinately refused, as though thinking that agreeing to this offer would arouse suspicion to his blossoming relationship with the angel. Sam vividly remembers deflating at Dean’s torrents of _nah, nah, it’s okay Sammy, one room is fine._  
  
And now he is locked in a motel room with two sexually charged men intent on emitting their reserved desires for one another once darkness settles in. Sam wishes, really squints his eyes and wishes, for him to fall asleep in two seconds flat, much like he’s watched Dean do before.  
  
He’s a little glad that the lack of illumination is eclipsing the steadily growing tinge of carmine on his cheekbones as the soft susurrus of whispers begin to start.  
  
He prays speechlessly to God that the whispers will be all he’ll be overhearing tonight.  
  
There isn’t even a divider in between the two beds. Just one singular bedside table, a gray lampshade and blinking alarm clock sitting innocuously on top of it. It’s not enough to divide the two beds from each other, let alone the sounds.  
  
Sam hears the sheets rustle and Dean’s low, raspy chuckle being stifled in his throat as though not to wake Sam.  
  
Which is useless, really, because he was never asleep. And now he never will be. He’s never going to sleep _again_.  
  
“Dean, your brother is barely a few feet away,” says Castiel, who hasn’t seemed to grasp the concept of whispering quite yet, “that’s just tactless.”  
  
Dean shushes him, and his method of shushing is a bit too nonverbal for Sam’s liking. He likes _shh_ ing. It’s prissy, but it’s soft, and he has yet to hear a person shhing louder than a decibel. The sound of lips pulling apart meets his ears, and suddenly Sam realizes exactly how Dean hushed Castiel’s noisy voice.  
  
“Shh,” Dean says, and the sheets move about some more. Sam addresses the ceiling fixedly, silently wondering what one is expected to do in the situation.  
  
He imagines birds, always clothed in feathers and only pecking at nut shells and soap suds with their beaks, never too keen in sexuality but more so in playing in birdbaths and making nests. Sam imagines birds being entirely asexual, and for a moment, the thought of asexuality mollifies his horrified mind, but a second later he hears a soft moan coming from Castiel’s lips and the birds fly away from his brain.  
  
 _Sleep. Sleep_ , Sam’s mind chants, and he pins his bottom lip between his teeth, _Goddammit, Sam Winchester, sleep or you’ll never sleep again._  
  
He knows that he and Dean are never sharing motel rooms ever again. He remembers his childhood, occasionally walking in on Dean masturbating on the toilet seat when he stumbled to the bathroom for a midnight pit stop, or hearing groans from the safe side of the door after coming home from school. He did what he always did, run away with his hands defensively in the air, eyes shut so tightly they were practically hermetic and never bring up the subject again.  
  
“Dean,” Castiel manages, finally seeming to realize that whispering is the appropriate form of talking, “shouldn’t we just wait till morning?”  
  
Sam likes Cas. He shouldn’t, for Cas is the angel that’s corrupting his brother – no matter how ironic that sounds – and causing him to indulge in activities after midnight that Sam isn’t all too fond of overhearing. Castiel is a sensible man, and for once, Sam’s praying that Dean will listen to him.  
  
“What, you aren’t having fun?” A giggle, much too honey-coated coming from Dean’s tongue, and Sam internally cringes. He’ll never be able to hear Dean speak again.  
  
He contemplates making his presence known, perhaps clearing his throat or murmuring a few warning words to penetrate the awkward silence that is only coming from Sam’s side of the room, and then decides against it, vaguely wondering if the other men would even hear it.  
  
Instead, he shifts on his side and presses his eardrum firmly against the pillowcase, staring intently at the frayed seams hanging off the edge of his pillow. The sheets next to his rustle again and the mattress bounces, and now Sam’s wondering if Dean is on top of Castiel or Castiel is on top of Dean or if for some unknown blissful miracle sent from up above, they’ve untangled their limbs from one another and shifted to their own respective sides of the bed.  
  
Of course, this isn’t the case.  
  
“Jesus _fuck_ ,” Sam mutters into his pillowcase, mouthing the words more than anything else, “fuck fuck fuck fuck.”  
  
Repeating his curses just for the sake of being repetitive, Sam is actually vaguely hoping that Dean will overhear the words and get the hint. He could be dreaming, easily, that some monster is eating him whole and now Sam is nothing but a blob of digestive matter floating in a mass of dark stomach acid, splashing around with a recently devoured egg or baked potato, and then it would be Dean’s duty to wake him up. He ponders if Dean would fulfill his brotherly obligation of saving Sam from his nightmares of being scarfed down as an afternoon aphrodisiac, and his mind promptly answers _no_.  
  
And now aphrodisiacs are in head, and Sam thinks whether or not the questionable tacos the three of them shared earlier have anything to do with this current situation.  
  
A sock goes flying across the room, and Sam whimpers inaudibly. Now they’re undressing.  
  
In his opinion, undressing is unnecessary. Especially after midnight. For some twisted reason in his already haunted mind, Sam believes that the image of his brother and Castiel having sex is a lot less torturous when he imagines them with their clothes taped comfortably over their skin.  
  
 _Maybe_ , Sam thinks desperately, and worries his lower lip with gnawing teeth, _maybe they’re just sockless._  
  
Soft sighs and all-too-easily identifiable groans of pleasure linger around awkwardly in the air. Sam weighs his options, and none of them are tantamount to an all-together bright outlook. He grimaces and weighs them anyway.  
  
He can grab his pillow and dash into the bathroom, mumbling prayers the whole time that Dean and Castiel are too absorbed in each other to notice a shadow high-tailing for the toilet and that his peripheral vision doesn’t pick up something he doesn’t want to see, bunking up in the bathtub with the cheap shampoo for a night. He can also make his presence known by blatantly announcing it, pleading for his brother to control his urges for just one more night and then buying the two men their own room with his well-earned poker money. Sam Winchester sucks at poker, but he’s willing to actually listen when Dean teaches him this time so he can find peace when he sleeps at night.  
  
He ponders if it’s too late to enforce either of these actions, because by now things have been muttered and secrets have been spilled, which would inevitably spill awkwardness all over the motel room floor. Sam doesn’t have the proper equipment to mop up such a grand mess.  
  
“Mmm,” Cas purrs, and a small gasp falls from his lips, “mm, Dean.”  
  
Sam feels like the boy holding the lamps over the set of a live porno. He swallows around the cumbersome lump in his esophagus. The collar of his nightshirt is suddenly feeling very itchy. He pulls at the fabric with his index finger and thumb.  
  
“God, Cas, your tongue, your _tongue_ –”  
  
Sam is no longer even in the conversation. It’s no longer whispers of _what if Sam wakes up?_ and the reassuring replies parroting back _he won’t, we’ll be quiet._  
  
Under his breath, Sam scoffs. If there’s anything Dean can’t do, it’s being silent.  
  
And apparently, Castiel is the same.  
  
The angel lets out an unsuppressed groan and pants, a bit too hotly for Sam’s liking. It’s all very hormonal and very horny and the room is just _bursting_ with testosterone. Sam wonders if it’d be any different if Dean was with a woman, or if _Sam_ was the one noisily making out with someone one bed away. And then he promptly remembers that it’s unlikely that Dean would even wake up in the first place.  
  
“Nngh, _you’re so fucking loud_ , Castiel.”  
  
More hurried kisses. Smack smack. Sam wants to hide in the closet.  
  
“I really can’t apologize for that,” Castiel replies in between kisses, panting breathlessly, and suddenly Dean makes a noise. It doesn’t take college-taught brilliance to deduce that Castiel has wormed his way on top, and Sam winces, thoughts of his brother’s dominance level crawling into his already-tortured mind.  
  
“Y’know,” Dean is saying, and Sam doesn’t think he’s even bothering to whisper anymore, “I don’t like these pants very much.”  
  
There’s a struggle, as though Dean has forgotten how to unbutton trousers amidst the haze of his sex-driven ecstasy, and then the distinct sound of pants being tugged down and a belt clinking fills the motel to mate with the sounds of pants and heaving breaths falling from dry tongues.  
  
“I think,” husks Castiel, and Dean purrs in response before Cas can even finish his sentence, the wet sound of flesh rubbing against flesh scarring Sam’s eardrums forever, “you should do the thing with your tongue, the same thing you did last time again.”  
  
 _Last time_. Sam doesn’t want to think about the previous times. Or the to-be times. He doesn’t want to think about sex at all. He feels like a fifth grader in health class being faced with discussions about condoms and erections while gruesome pictures of STDs float around the walls, and Sam blushes more than he already is. His cheeks hurt, and he rubs them.  
  
“Are you talking about the blow job?” Dean mumbles, much too loudly, and Sam is dying.  
  
Actually, Sam is _dead_. This is worse than the time he and Dean dragged Cas to the store and Sam stood two aisles away, making friends with the nice, nice cereal boxes that never make him feel awkward while Dean and Cas conversed about condom brands as though they were the only humans in the whole store. Sam remembers the words _extra large_ and _I think we’ll need more than one box, Dean_ while he overhears the whole conversation and makes it his task to disappear into the Captain Crunch.  
  
Up until now, he has believed that incident to be the most awkward experience of his lifetime, but now that he is faced with the live show of the condoms in action, Sam isn’t quite so sure anymore.  
  
“I wasn’t referring to that. That thing you did, Dean, while Sam was driving the Impala?”  
  
Sam blinks, and makes a small noise, like a cow’s birthing cry. Neither Dean nor Castiel seem to notice.  
  
Dean chuckles, and their lips are smacking again, wetly.  
  
“I can’t believe Sammy didn’t notice that. You were so loud.”  
  
Sam pales to a ghostly complexion, deflating from his nostrils and ears. He furls his knuckles around the comforter. He’s sneezing in Dean’s breakfast tomorrow for this.  
  
Soft sighs of contentment echo around the room, falling from Dean’s mouth straight into Castiel’s. Sam can’t help but begin to ponder if Castiel is in the middle of royally breaking the angel code, because if priests had to be celibate, he can’t even imagine how holy angels had to be. Then again, Cas has probably managed to penetrate the godly regulations about sex the second he agreed to be committed to Dean Winchester and stuck his tongue down to greet his tonsils.  
  
Castiel touches something. Dean moans, and Sam expects a call from the motel manager registering noise complaints from the adjoining rooms to break the silence any moment now, and despite the humiliation of being told to keep down the sex, it would give him excuse to be awake, and that would release him from his hell faster than any other plans Sam is thinking of executing.  
  
“Not so loud, Dean, you’ll wake Sam.”  
  
“Sam’s sound asleep, Cas, t-trust me, _nn_ , do that again–”  
  
 _There is an elephant in the room_ , Sam mentally flails, _and its name is sex._  
  
Sam wants to push the elephant up the stairs, but that’s the thing about motel rooms. They’re small and cramped and not meant for more than two people, especially not when two of them are having sex very loudly. That’s what sleazy hotels with complimentary paper bathrobes are for, with ice buckets that are miraculously always full with ice, a champagne-bottle-sized hole already made in the center. They are built for sex and the sheets are made to be stained.  
  
But no, they are in a motel, and motels aren’t meant for sex. Thin cardboard walls with tacky wallpaper plastered over them and toilets that flushed two minutes too late and cockroaches mating in the corners don’t scream sex and sleaze. It screams filth and motel room griminess, but that doesn’t stop Dean and Castiel from using it for sex.  
  
In all candor, Sam is a little jealous. Not because he wants to be the sandwiched in between a mattress and be underneath either one of them, but because it’s been a while since Sam has been able to wrinkle the bed sheets and disturb the silence with moans that come from his own tongue. Deep within the twisted happiness he feels for Dean’s questionable relationship with Castiel, he’s envious that even amidst a deadly apocalypse, Dean has found someone to share his bed with.  
  
An angel, no less.  
  
Sam tuts quietly. Their family is so fucked up.  
  
And then he crashes back down from his thoughts to reality as Castiel moans again, louder than before, the sound of nails scraping down skin filling the air. The bed bounces again. Sam resists looking to see who’s on top now, simply because he’s already seen much more than he wants to, and Dean’s bare thighs are only part of it.  
  
“God, Cas,” says Dean, and then softly afterward, almost like it’s an afterthought he’s afraid to voice, “love you.”  
  
For a second, the panting and the rubbing and the sex all seem to halt, and Sam blinks.  
  
For one thing, he’s never heard those words being uttered from his brother’s lips before in his whole lifetime, and frankly, he’s a little frightened, trying to reconstruct his time-line of how long Dean and Cas have been officially together, because love is just impossible. It’s one of those untouchable topics that aren’t even discussed, just instantly negated and denied, like a sterile man’s reproduction rate.  
  
Even when Sam crashed his bike on the pavement outside of some motel room in Detroit when he was a mere six-years-old, kneecaps bothered and bleeding and eyes pooling with water, Dean didn’t soothe his brother with _I love you_ s. Even when John first broke the news about their mother to Sam and Sam locked himself in the closet sobbing for seven hours, declining every meal that day, Dean didn’t say _I love you_. Even when Sam left for college and their goodbye was significantly longer than their goodbyes normally were, they didn’t end on _I love you_ s and _please come back_ s.  
  
Sam pauses, and wonders how many times Dean has said this to Cas. And if this isn’t the first time, if Cas knows the importance of such a statement coming from Dean’s mouth.  
  
“I love you too, Dean,” Cas mumbles against his lips, and Dean moans.  
  
Sam smiles.  
  
And a second later, when he realizes he’s doing it, he stops. His brother and his angel are still shirtless and grinding hips and this is no time to be smiling.  
  
Especially when, despite the deeply reciprocated love, both men have erections like teenagers, and it only takes six more unspeakably long minutes before both of them utter cries loud enough to signify the completion of their activities.  
  
Sam doesn’t know if he’ll ever look Dean in the face again, much less Castiel, who he used to imagine as being a holy angel who never strayed from the rules. Now all he thinks of is tongues and blow jobs and the two of them doing dirty things in the back of the Impala while he’s obliviously driving through endless stretches of roads.  
  
It’s really not all too white roses and chocolates, schoolgirl-esque and dancing the tango in the rain, and as much as Sam wishes for their dysfunctional family to pick up the leftover crumbles and create some twisted sense of what a family should be like, minus the dog and the half a child, he can’t see it happening with angels.  
  
Then there’s another part of him, imagining it all. Perhaps Castiel is part of that family picture, just him and Dean and Sam and the Impala in the back as the camera flashes.  
  
Except that this family is a little too twisted for Sam’s liking.  
  
He pictures pretty girls on both of their shoulders in the years to come, long brown hair and blue eyes, a few freckles sprinkled over their noses and shoulders. Not Sam alone and faced headfirst with the apocalypse while Dean fucks an angel in a different motel room every night.  
  
Sam licks his lips, the sudden silence almost foreign to his heavily haunted mind, his brother’s moans practically chorusing in his brain on their own. Sam squints.  
  
A soft sigh from Dean’s bed eliminates Sam’s suspicions that Dean and Castiel have sunken asleep from exhaustion. The whole room stinks of lazy Friday night sex and the lingering smell of washed linens, and for some reason, Sam feels all right.  
  
The bed sheets shift again, and through the shadows Sam can detect a lump in the shape of two men in the bed on his left, curled around each other like pickles in a jar.  
  
Sam makes a noise, and wonders if it’s safe to look.  
  
“You just can’t ever be quiet, can you, Cas?” whispers Dean, straight onto Castiel’s earlobe, but it’s quiet enough that Sam picks it up as well.  
  
“I could be,” Cas replies, a little indignantly, and Dean snickers, “I believe it is your fault that I’m not.”  
  
Soft, lazy kisses, and more sweet nothings that Sam has never heard fall out of Dean’s mouth before and has never even imagined them falling out of any orifice of Dean’s. They’re the chick flick moments Dean loathes, the femininity of a relationship he tends to avoid like the plague, the cuddles and the kisses he has never been fond of when they don’t lead to at least fifteen-minute sex.  
  
Sam tilts his head on the pillow. This is strange.  
  
“You heard all of that, didn’t you?”  
  
He blinks. And slowly, almost like a roller coaster ticking up a hill, his stomach rises and his heart falls. Sam speechlessly fuses his lips together, hoping that Dean is talking to Cas. Loudly. Louder than necessary. Maybe to the wall. Maybe himself, because Dean is just that kind of boy.  
  
Sam sighs, and inhales a mouthful of pillow as he flattens his nose with it, breathing in masses of dull, dirty blue pillowcase, wanting the mattress to swallow him.  
  
“YesI’msorry.”  
  
It’s all one word falling out of the same breath. Sam sighs again. Castiel is strangely wordless, and for a second Sam almost thinks it’s funny that the angel is probably crimson with embarrassment.  
  
“All of it?” Dean confirms, sounding a little deflated. Sam nods even though through the darkness, Dean can’t see.  
  
“I… am happy?” Sam tries, a little helplessly, “for you, I mean. It’s sweet. Sort of. If not a little weird.”  
  
“Don’t tell me it’s sweet, Sammy, that’s ridiculous.”  
  
Huffing, his voice no longer honey-coated and husky, Dean scoffs. Sam nods dutifully, and silence fills the room again.  
  
“Two rooms from now on, I’m not kidding.”  
  
“Or maybe you just take that bathroom.” Dean suggests, and muffles his snickers in Castiel’s shoulder.  
  
“…and not in the back of the Impala anymore,” Sam feels the need to add, a little miffed, and then again for emphasis, “ _not_. At least not when I’m driving.”  
  
Cas makes a small noise. For a second, Sam is a little amused. Dean senses it.  
  
“Sammy?” He prompts in the silence. Sam props himself up on his elbows and stares sleepily over at where he assumes his brother’s foggy outline is.  
  
“Mmhm?”  
  
“We’ll be quieter next time, I swear.” Dean promises, sliding his ankle up and down the mattress, the sheets wrinkling in the process.  
  
Castiel swats him. Sam smirks.  
  
“I doubt Cas can do that.”


End file.
